The sensitive-youth coming-out-story books that validated me in my 20's were furtive purchases made in the small sociology sections of progressive book stores. There has been a lot of wine drunk talking with friends my age about how we each thought we were the only person in our high school or neighborhood who felt that way. Surfing today at the Microsoft clip art page, I typed in "gay" as a search term.  Poof!  Really, "poof". Two pages of corporately categorized gay images, including tasteful, g-rated photos of same-sex couples appeared. Here's to Harvey's kids in Altuna, Pennsylvania who can now [...]

It's a gorgeous fall day -- finally -- in The City.  Bright sun. No fog. Clean. On the way home from the gym in the fresh, quiet morning morning I saw four pedestrians scattered throughout the neighborhood.  Three were obviously focused on their cell phones, engrossed in conversations, oblivious to the beautiful world. The fourth was being walked by a frolicking dog. No phone. The dog refused to allow such a artificial nuisance to interfere with such a perfect morning.

From the SF LGBT Community Center and Equality California… PREPARE TO GATHER FOR COMMUNITY RESPONSE WHEN GOVERNOR ACTS ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY BILL Thank you for your tireless efforts to convince Governor Schwarzenegger to sign AB 849 and make California the first state to enact marriage equality through legislative action. The day the Governor acts — which could be as early as Friday – we will join together as a community to respond. We will rally at 5:00 pm at Harvey Milk Plaza, (corner of Castro & Market) and then march to the LGBT Center (corner of Market and Octavia) for [...]

Unitarian Universalists don't have a creedal test of membership.  This leads to people ask "Well, what do you believe?"  And, it leads to lots of retorts, such as, "Well we can believe anything except that we, personally, are God." There are lots more jokes and cute lines, and all with elements of truth, I'm sure. Right now my church is looking for a new minister (we pick our own), and part of the process is finding out what the members of our congregation believe so that we find a  minister who'll be able to lead us successfully. Over half of our members [...]

redozdachs frightened me by posting the results of the results of the politics test he took.  He scored as Democrat, which  he's been sounding more and more like over the years... as I have been sounding more and more like Barry Goldwater reincarnated.  (Okay, maybe Nelson Rockefeller.) But, I passed. See the Strong Democratic details behind the cut

Our friend Patty's organization that normally sets up voicemail for homeless people in cities around the country is working with the Red Cross, Cisco Systems, and SBC Communications to give free voicemail to Katrina victims. Good job, Patty!

The U.S. government requested emergency food rations for Hurricane Katrina victims. But, after the United Kingdom airlifted 400,000 daily rations, our government would not distribute the food for five days. (Thanks to dr_scott for the original cheery blog bit on this travesty that occurred September 5 -10th.) President Bush and his administration are simply too comfortable to understand real life. The concept of the life-or-death emergency need for food apparently is one which apparently so foreign to them that they just cannot deal. How many generations back is Marie Antoinette in Bush's ancestry, anyway?

When Hollis and Mary Pat decided to remodel their 1950's box house into their dream retirement home a few years ago, they hooked up with Ashland, Oregon's top home designer and an excellent contractor. The result of their renovation was featured in the regional newspaper last spring. Their contractor is a great guy. He's intuitive and does careful, quality work. Jeff Hamlett (pictured left) asked me to do a website for him to show off his work. He engaged a local photographer to take pictures of some of his houses, and I put it together on a website. There wasn't much [...]

The new computer continues to be my pleasant task master, demanding my attention and robbing me of time normally set aside for reading about yak breeding on the Internet or composing worthy blog entries. Most of my actions have been the trivial entering of unlock registration codes and the downloading of drivers for infrequently used ancient scanners and other more esoteric devices. allanh's suggestion  to use  "AlohaBob PC Relocator" was appreciated, but it did, indeed, arrive too late for this transfer. I have followed Walt Mossberg's Wall Street Journal suggestion and am trying Foldershare to keep my laptop and new desktop files [...]